On the way back to the City’s Edge, the three of us were subdued; it was easy to see why Tain had not responded well to us, and despite the occasional lapse in judgement in our – and sometimes specifically my judgement – we were generally much smarter as a group than we had been over the last few days. The fact that city was affecting us was no surprise; I had personally been obsessing over it since our arrival, but the continual enforcement was something else. We kept finding new, subtle ways in which we were affected.

We were about half-way through the journey back when I felt a faint tingle from my Instinctive Precognition, and distracted from my thoughts looked up as a trio of men in black and red robes stepped out from an alley. Looking around us, I saw that we were along on one of the city’s narrower streets; I wondered whether this was pure coincidence, the group taking the opportunity to confront us when presented with it, or something more engineered.

“What do we have here? A trio of informants running off to the Blood and Bones to tell tales? Tales of what, I wonder?”

Their apparent leader was tall and slender, and wore a stark white mask that hid his features. Held loosely to his side was a slender dagger that carried an odd sheen. His companions, flanking him on either side, were empty handed, but I knew that meant nothing, on a world on which a person could become a dragon.

Their robes seemed to give them away as members of one of the sects I had seen confronting one another before the Blood Guard became involved. I felt my eyes narrow and my heart pick-up; right now was probably the worst time for the three sect members to be picking a fight with us, I was very conscious of how hard the Guard came down on confrontations in the streets.

I had my mouth half-open to growl a reply when Darina barrelled head first into the stomach of the leader, knocking him off his feet with a sharp exhalation of air. The other two robed men did not react at first, seemingly shocked by the sudden aggression. But as the violent healer began to hammer freshly armoured fists into the speaker’s face, they stepped forward, as if to intervene.

Not willing to let them gang-up on my friend, I Focused, taking the reins of my lightning as the world slowed around me. I was not channelling my Path, as I did not want to burn more energy than necessary, or at least until it was proven necessary.

I stepped forward in my slowed world, moving twice as fast as normal, closing the distance between us in a flash, dipping as I reached the man closest to me and rising into a partial upper-cut, twisting my body around my centre and away from the ground to drive every last drop of my – relatively light - accumulated momentum into the blow. At the last possible moment, I let my lightning slip out of my control with a shrieking whine, and as the air spiked sharp and sour and the light flickered blue and blinding, my opponent, who had barely begun to react flipped end over end away from me, smoke rising from his chin lazily.

I heard a muted whumph off to the side, and turning out the other man sailing backwards in the same direction as my own opponent, though in the last sect member’s case, the smoking patch was most of his torso. A foot shaped burn covered his entire front as the ragged and still lit edged of his robe retreated. Reff stood on Darina’s other side, his molten armour coving him from head to toe.

Seeing the additional threats were out of commission, and having now more warnings from my abilities, I dropped my Focus, just in time to hear the twin impacts of the two we had sent flying hitting the floor. Neither of the two stood up, and I worried at their cultivation stages; I had no interest in being a bully. Even if it did feel good to work out just a tiny bit of my pent-up aggression. For a moment, I hoped Flippy McBurnface would stand up, but I had no such luck, and as tempting as it was to walk over and make myself feel better, I managed to refrain from such an obviously dick-like act.

Of course, Darina did not seem to have any such compunctions, still driving her fist into the apparent leader’s unconscious face. Blood was splattered all over his face and leaked from a ruined nose, flecks spattering the ground around him, as well as the healer’s face and clothing.

“Darina, I think he’s done, definitely not any threat at the moment. Darina!”

I reached out and tapped her shoulder, prompting both a pause in the vicious beating and a glare from her red-jade eyes. I held my hands up but mentally rolled my eyes; I had no interest in inciting her ire – normally – but the temptation was definitely there to just cut loose. Still, I resisted, conscious at least that I needed to conserve my energy for real threats, for the moment.

“We need to get out of here; these three were pushovers, but they might have backup, and worse, the Blood Guard may get involved and from what I’ve seen they don’t mess around. Let’s go."

The healer’s apprentice stared at me for a long moment, and I could see her feelings warring behind her eyes, but as often as she gave into to her irritation, on that occasion, caution won and she visibly calmed.

“Fine, you’re right. We should leave.”

She climbed off the hopefully only unconscious man, wiping blood off her freshly fleshy fists on the dark fabric of his robe.

Stooping down, I caught her frown out of the corner of my eye as I patted him down, looking for storage items; I wanted any clues they might have, but there was always room for loot. I found a bracelet with a small black stone and pocketed it quickly, standing and moving towards the guy I had knocked out.

“With firm exasperation, if it is important that we leave quickly, Hunter, should we not... leave?”

“They might have clues about what’s going on. And this place is expensive.”

I heard Darina grumbling behind me, but at least she did not go back to punching the leader or insulting me.

I had just found a small ring on my vict-opponent's pinky finger when I felt my Instinct start to itch again. I looked at the third, smouldering figure laying half-against a wall a short distance away and grumbling under my own breath stood.

“Right, let’s go!”

“I thought you were looking for ‘clues’?”

“Two out of three is good enough, but we really should go. I, uh, have a bad feeling.”

The two of them shared a look; since we had met, they had learned to trust my feelings – sometimes – if only because the rate at which trouble found me was definitely more than a coincidence by that point.

The three of us dashed off without another word, cutting through alleys as quickly as we could – without wasting energy. Eventually, the feeling I was getting faded and I let out a sigh, only sort of regretting giving up the opportunity to release some more of my pent-up aggression.

*

***

*

“Nothing. Well, more dark robes and some pills, but mostly nothing.”

Neither of the two rings had contained anything of substance, not even any cash. Beyond the clothes and whatever the pills turned out to be, each had contained a simple wood token with some sort of stylized man and shadow carved into it. I assumed it was some sort of sect identification, but without knowing which it was for, that did not even do us any good.

“With hesitant curiosity, did you really expect to find a clue on their persons, Hunter?”

“... It worked last time, Riffa.”

“Of all the corpses we've looted, you’ve found one clue. You have the luck of fools, but you’re not that lucky.”

“We’ve found a bunch of clues; dozens of Risen Throne pendants.”

“Those don’t count, we already knew they were members!”

“... We didn’t always know; they could have been bandits. Reff and I were attacked by bandits on our way to the Citadel. And actually, the lack of pendants at least suggests those assholes were not a part of the Risen Throne.”

Darina gave me a flat look and I shrugged back in return, was pretty sure I had scored a point there, even if she would never admit it.

“This does raise the question, given what they said to you, that they were watching the Blood Guard’s base. Were they watching you – us – or simply seeking to interrogate anybody who ventured inside?”

Toria had been awake when we returned to the City’s Edge, and vaguely embarrassed at having slept for as long as she had. The fact that it had been the result of alchemical medication did not seem to mitigate the fact in her mind, but people could be weird about the oddest things. She did pose a good question, however.

As we made our way back, I had done my best to look for anybody else watching or following, and we had even done a couple of laps around the inn, including checking out nearby roofs, but had seen nobody. Instinctive Precognition had not pinged at all; even though it had apparently grown more sensitive in the time since I had upgraded it, but it still only flared up when there was some kind of actual danger. I guessed being watched did not count as danger.

“We checked and couldn’t find anybody watching either us or the inn; it’s possible that they have some sort of... stealth specialists, or some kind of... observation expert? Is that a thing?”

“The cult members we stopped at the prison site carried a visual amplification array to allow them to observe at a distance, but that requires line of sight. It is possible they have people who can view us remotely, one way or another, but in this instance, I think it more likely they were watching the Guard.”

“But why? Just looking for informants? Isn’t that super suspicious if they get caught by the Guard?”

“With informed speculation, I do not think we have enough information to be sure in our guesses, but we did observe that most people avoided the Guard’s headquarters, so it may simply have been suspicious that we entered at all. It is also possible that they were serving as a form of early warning for their sect, letting them know if a force of Guards should head in their direction.”

“You think these aren’t just random fights, that the sects are planning where to fight, Reff?”

“With thoughtful consideration, it would make sense. In a city such as this, with competing sects and the Blood Guard themselves, it would be easy to step into a situation that posed more danger than benefit. In order to maximise their gains, careful planning would be appropriate.”

“What does this mean for us? Should we seek out this, ‘Earthen Sky’ sect, or the other one that attacked us?”

I could tell by Darina’s tone that she was in favour of going to find the Weird Man-Shadow sect, if only to start some trouble, but it occurred to me that we had no idea if the two were even different.

“Do we know they’re not the same people? Do you think it’s worth asking Loneth?”

“With firm caution, perhaps we should simply ask after the Earthen Sky sect’s colours and symbols, rather than presenting the tokens? If they are not proven to be one and the same, it would be foolish to let the proprietress know we may be in conflict with multiple sects. She seems willing to risk trouble with one, but if I owned an inn, I certainly would not want my guests starting wars with multiple sects.”

“Right, good point, Riffa. So, we’re back to asking Loneth. I guess I’ll go check to see if she’s in. And then we can shake off this aura and go take a trip outside the walls. Hopefully.”